


When the Muse is asleep

by ginnyred



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 18:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17872241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnyred/pseuds/ginnyred
Summary: Marti is doing homework at his desk, and Nico should too. Instead, he's lying on Marti's bed reading Marti's essay. Marti is very proud of it. He basically skipped out of the school gate earlier, essay in hand, waving it under Nico's nose.“Ni! Guess who's officially a genius?”





	When the Muse is asleep

“You write well.”

It comes out more surprised than Nico planned.

Marti is doing homework at his desk, and Nico should too. Instead, he's lying on Marti's bed reading Marti's essay. Marti is very proud of it. He basically skipped out of the school gate earlier, essay in hand, waving it under Nico's nose.

“Ni! Guess who's officially a genius?”

Nico smiled.

“Mmmm... Is it someone I know?” Nico replied, pretending to ponder over the question, and Marti called him an asshole but kissed him anyway. Or tried to. Their lips barely touched, Marti was grinning so much.

There is a 9 written in red ink at the top of the first page, and a string of exclamation points under it. Nico can relate. Sure, the way Mannerism reinvents and reuses classical tropes may not be the most exciting of topics, but Marti seems to be weirdly into it.

And it fucking shows.

Still, Nico didn't mean to make it sound like he didn't think Marti _could_ write like that.

“What I mean is-” he tries to amend, but Marti just snorts, amused.

“I know what you mean.” He turns on his chair to look at Nico and grins mischievously. “Gio hates it.”

“What?”

“How easy it comes to me? Writing. Last year I got 8 ½ on a philosophy test I had not studied for.” He laughs at the memory and Nico notices how the corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement. “Gio gave me, like, a one-minute summary of Heraclitus before class and I went with it. He got 8.”

Nico laughs along.

“So it's not like... a new thing?”

“Well, I'd never got 9 in an essay before. So it's a bit new, yeah.”

“Congratulations, love.” Nico smiles. “You deserve it.”

Marti grins and crawls from the desk chair onto the bed looking for cuddles. Nico leans back against the headboard and Marti settles against him, his back against Nico's chest, Nico's arms around his waist.

Nico kisses his neck – just a peck, feather-like – and tries not to be _too_ pleased by the way Marti sighs contentedly and turns his head to one side, a clear invitation.

“You've never told me, though,” Nico insists as he peppers kisses on Marti's jaw. He can sense there's more to this, and he wants to know everything there is to know about Marti. “About the writing thing.”

Marti's focus is not the best at the moment. He's got his eyes closed and Nico smiles when Marti raises a hand to his cheek to steer him away from his jaw and towards the base of his neck. Maybe not just cuddles then.

Marti hums distractedly.

“What's there to tell?” A sharp intake of breath, as Nico starts nibbling playfully on his skin. “Why are we talking about this _now?_ ”

“We were talking about this before,” Nico whispers teasingly against Marti's skin. A kiss, a bite. He feels his own breaths quicken as Marti shivers in his arms. “But then you got turned on by your 9, I think.”

Marti snorts.

“Shut up,” he says. And he turns to meet Nico's lips in a breathy, open-mouthed kiss.

They don't talk for a while then, but Nico is hardly complaining.

*

“The answer is no, by the way.”

“Mh.” Marti's tummy is really comfortable and Nico was about to fall asleep. He cracks one eye open and looks up at him. “What?”

“I said, the answer is no.” Marti's fingers start carding through his hair, gently massaging the back of his head, and Nico makes a contented sound in the back of his throat. “I don't write. Outside of school.”

“How did you know I was going to ask you that?”

“ _Please._ ” Marti pulls his hair playfully. “You're not exactly subtle.”

“Neither are you,” Nico retorts quickly, but he's smiling. “You don't write, okay. What's the part you're leaving out?”

Marti pulls his mouth to one side, like he does when he's trying not to smile.

“I'm not.”

“You wouldn't have brought this up if there wasn't _more._ ” Nico pinches Marti's side and pulls himself up to rest his head on the pillow so they're face to face. “I wasn't born yesterday, you know.”

“I know, you're a relic.” Marti smirks. “The Vatican museums called, they want you next to the Laocoön.”

“Is that an insult or a fantasy of yours?”

Two months ago, that would have made him blush. Now Marti just grins and leans forward to kiss Nico on the lips. Nico would call it a personal victory of his, but really, it's just Marti being more comfortable in his skin.

“You're right,” Marti says, mere inches from Nico's lips. “About the writing, I mean.” He shakes his head and his tone gets sour. “I used to write things... before. I haven't in a while.”

“Before when?” Nico asks, though he thinks he can guess.

“Before my dad left. Then everything started going to shit and I didn't feel like trying anymore.” Marti shrugs, though he's lying down and it looks a bit like he's trying to burrow further into the covers. Maybe he is. “I haven't taken it up again since.”

Nico reaches out and strokes Marti's cheek gently, carefully – soothingly, he hopes.

“You wrote stories?”

“Not... really.”

“What then?”

Marti's eyes meet his and Nico can see him debate how far he wants to take this. Nico smiles back reassuringly.

“I haven't told anyone – well, I told Gio. Part of it. Promise you won't laugh,” Marti says, and he looks embarrassed, and also a bit like he wants to laugh himself.

“I would never.”

It's the truth, and Marti knows it. Still, he intertwines their fingers and looks down at them for a long time before replying.

“They were more like... poems. I guess? Not good ones, obviously.”

“That's great,” Nico says and when Marti looks up at him, his face opening up in a self-deprecating smile, he beams back and can see the relief flooding Marti's expression. Nico is overwhelmed by the affection he feels, then, and leans forward to kiss Marti's forehead. “That's really _really_ great, Marti. Thanks for telling me.”

“Yeah, they weren't good or anything. And they didn't have many metaphors, I'm not great at those.” Marti scoffs, and Nico smiles fondly. “But... I liked writing them.” Marti pauses, contemplating what he's saying, or maybe reminiscing – Nico doesn't know and he doesn't push him to explain. He can feel more is coming anyway. “I liked the structure. I liked that you could challenge the structure and still belong within it – in a way. It made... a lot of sense to me. I know it's weird.”

“It's not.” Nico strokes the back of Marti's hands gently. “What did you write about?”

“Oh, anything. That's the thing. Fourteen lines of hendecasyllables, the right rhyme scheme, and it's a sonnet.” Marti huffs a laugh. “But I can write about beating Elia at FIFA if I want to.”

Nico smiles.

“Did you?”

“No. Mainly 'cause I can never beat Elia at FIFA, he's a cyborg. But I wrote about when we eliminated Barcelona in the quarter-finals last year.” Marti snorts. “You can laugh now if you want to.”

Nico shrugs.

“Did people laugh at Pindar when he wrote his poems about the Olympic games?”

“I'm not Pindar, though.”

“Thank God,” Nico grins. “The beard would be a bit much, honestly.”

They kiss again, and Marti's hands leave Nico's so he can hold his face while he kisses him – slow and deliberate. Marti hides his next words in the crook of Nico's neck.

“I wrote more traditional stuff as well. That I haven't told anyone about.”

“Yeah?” Nico says in a gentle tone. He can tell whatever it is that Marti is trusting him with is very fragile. “Like what?”

“Like love poems.”

He doesn't say more but there is no need. Nico knows now – and Marti made his peace with it some time ago. But that's not what this is about, not exactly.

Marti clings to Nico at the waist and his next words come out strangled, like Marti is trying not to cry: “I'm sorry. I wish I could still write so I could write more for you.”

That startles Nico a bit. He wasn't expecting it.

He's a little slow to react, so when he opens his mouth to reply, when he reaches out to stroke Marti's hair soothingly, Marti is speaking again: “You do so much for me, all the notes and the art and everything, and I'm just... _here._ I'm so sorry, I don't know why I can't do it anymore. You deserve better.”

_Oh, Marti._

Nico wraps an arm around his waist and holds him, maybe a bit tighter than necessary, but he hopes it gets the message across.

_I'm here. I want to be here._

Marti's face is still hidden in Nico's neck, so he kisses his hair. He wants to say that it doesn't matter, that Nico loves him no matter what, that he doesn't need poems to know that Marti loves him back. But this is important to Marti and he doesn't want to sound dismissive.

He takes a couple more seconds to think of what to say – though, really, it shouldn't take this long. He knows what this feels like. He's never told Marti, not in so many words, but he's spent so much time making excuses, and maybe this is his chance to explain.

“These things come and go, Marti,” he says softly in the end. “I hadn't played the piano in a long time – I couldn't. It brought up... too many memories I didn't want to deal with. And then two weeks ago I felt like playing again. Nothing happened – well, _time_ happened, I suppose. I wanted to play again, so I did. Only that one time, but I did. Don't beat yourself up – you went through a hard time and it takes a while to adjust. This says nothing about you, or about your feelings, or anything like that.”

“But I'm so happy now, Ni.” Marti looks up at him, earnest and intense, and Nico stops breathing for a second. There's so much feeling in that one look. “I'm so happy with you and you deserve it, and I just... can't write anymore.”

“You can. You got proof of that today, didn't you?”

Marti scoffs.

“That's school stuff, it doesn't count.”

“School doesn't exist on a different plane of reality, you know?” Nico smiles gently. “You are just writing different things now. If you really want to, I'm sure you'll go back to poems at some point. Or maybe you'll discover that you like stories better now.” He grins. “But if you want to dedicate to me your next essay on Torquato Tasso I'll love it all the same.”

Marti laughs, and burrows closer again, but it doesn't feel like he's trying to hide now.

“Yeah, don't hold your breath for that.”

“I'll hold my breath for this,” Nico says, and he kisses him. Marti tries to kiss back, while snorting and rolling his eyes at him at the same time. It makes them both giggle.

“Ni.”

“Marti.”

They smile at each other.

“I'm sorry I kept asking you to play the piano,” Marti says, and Nico hates that he looks ashamed.

“You didn't know,” he replies firmly, stroking Marti's cheek. “I should have told you. I promise I'll explain better – soon.”

“It's okay. I'm just happy you're playing again.”

Nico bites his lip. He's happy too – happy and terribly unsure. He doesn't want to expect too much, but it's hard not to be excited after so long.

“It was just that one time.”

“Well, one has to start somewhere, right?” Marti's smile is bright and encouraging, and Nico hopes that one day he'll be able to offer Marti the same kind of relentless optimism Marti can always bring into Nico's life. God knows deserves it. “Here, let me...”

Marti sits up and leans over the side of the bed towards his desk. His physics book lies there, open and half-forgotten, but that's not what he reaches for. Nico watches him grab a pen from his pencil case and uncap it carefully.

“What are you doing?” Nico says amusedly, when Marti tries the pen on his own hand to see if it works.

“Starting somewhere,” Marti replies with a smile and grabs Nico's arm. “Stay still.”

It's weird because it feels like they've swapped places somehow.

Nico spends half of his time doodling on Marti's arms – one glorious afternoon on Marti's back too – but Marti has never tried this before. The tip of the pen feels ticklish against the inside of Nico's forearm, and he cranes his neck curiously to peak at whatever it is that Marti is writing.

He gets a slap on the cheek for that – well, a caress, really.

“Not yet,” Marti says, and Nico lies back down on the pillow and looks at the way Marti's brow furrows in concentration. He smiles to himself at that weird thing Marti does when he's thinking where he pokes the tip of his nose with the pen.

It's stupidly endearing.

It takes him a few minutes, but in the end Marti puts the cap back onto the pen with a self-satisfied smile and frees Nico's arm so he can finally have a look.

The colour contrast is the first thing he notices – shiny black ink against pale skin. He never thought he liked tattoos before – well, not on himself, he would die for Marti's – but Marti's neat, precise handwriting looks like it belongs on him.

Even though-

“Fottiti, Musa, non posso aspettarti*,” Nico reads aloud. He laughs and looks up. “A bit harsh but relatable. Why on my arm?”

“To make the Muse jealous?” Marti grins back and Nico scoffs – Marti's compliments are always ridiculous and he wouldn't trade them for the world. “You missed the best part, though.”

“What?”

Marti's grin widens and Nico swears he can see his eyes sparkle.

“It's a hendecasyllable.”

**Author's Note:**

> * “Fuck you, Muse, I cannot wait for you.”
> 
> The Italian literary canon is collectively turning in their graves. Shoutout to them.


End file.
